Steve Miller is a friend, a colleague, and an authority on the Sangiovese grape in central Tuscany and on the chunky red wines of the Piemonte. He also happens to be a tenured professor at Harvard who has just published this essay for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Read it, please, for a thoughtful tour d’horizon of where things stand right now [...]
[ by Charles Cameron -- truth or consequences? ] . Okay, you can’t always trust intelligence agencies: some of what they do is necessarily clandestine. And you can’t always trust the media: some of what they do is allegedly fair and balanced. Then there are folks like Michael Ruppert, who holds VP Dick Cheney at [...]
[ by Charles Cameron -- looking through the eyes of tech, math, art, flies, and intelligence ] . Imaging the winds and the waters… I’ve been raising questions about the varieties of ways of seeing here — asking whether guardian angels can be more than guys on night watch and if so what that “more” [...]
I am back from London –where I participated in a Track 2 conversation with real live North Korean officials, with Kim Il Sung pins and everything. It was very interesting! 1. The International Institute for Strategic Studies hosted a n0t-for-attribution Track 2 event at Arundel House. They are preparing a report, but let me make [...]
[ by Charles Cameron - guardian angels, really? -- or a surface use of in-depth terminology? ] . . Just two days ago I posted Quantity and Quality: angelic hosts at Badr and / or Armageddon, and noted in a comment that “the Counterinsurgency Manual, FM 3-24 makes no mention of angels” — whereas “Brigadier Malik’s [...]
[by J. Scott Shipman] IMAGINE How Creativity Works, by Jonah Lehrer Mr. Lehrer’s excellent new book came to my attention via a long article in the Wall Street Journal on creativity. IMAGINE is written in the style popularized by Malcolm Gladwell (in books such as The Tipping Point, blink, and Outliers) where scientific research is synthesized and made accessible and interesting [...]
[ by Charles Cameron -- commemoration of al-Hallaj, sufi and martyr, the nature of circumambulation, matrioshka, modeling and mandalas ] . According to a report by Fahad Faruqui in today’s Huff Post, Mansur al-Hallaj was martyred on this day, March 26, 922 CE. His offence is often said to have been that he declared “An [...]
Last week, Katie and I spent the week in Washington, DC, bringing Peace Action West’s priorities to Capitol Hill and connecting with other organizations from around the country that are doing wonderful work to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Here’s a quick update on the top issues we talked about in our meetings with [...]
[ by Charles Cameron -- on a mostly overlooked possible asymmetry ] Michael Peck posted a piece at the game site Kotaku yesterday, titled The Immense Pleasure of Huge War Games, and his opening quote startled me – it’s not one I’d heard before. Here’s Peck’s first para: “Quantity has a quality all its own,” [...]
Since the Cold War ended, no region has experienced more shocks or a more significant reorientation in US foreign policy than South Asia. The big shift was enabled by the demise of the Soviet Union and New Delhi’s turn away from Nehruvian economics to market-oriented entrepreneurship. Then came the 1998 nuclear tests, the Kargil War, [...]
: . skip to main skip to sidebar The Nuclear Abolitionist Working towards a nuclear weapons-free world Pages Home Video Photo Y-12 Witness Quotable America needs a new nuclear weapon as much as Lady Gaga needs another new . outfit Rep . Ed Markey D-MA Saturday , March 24, 2012 A Scene we'd like to see in the U.S . Here is a scene see photo below we would be highly unlikely to see in the U.S . nbsp Folks across the Big Pond have been engaging in a spirited debate on the crazy idea of a Trident replacement . nbsp Wouldn't it be great to get some serious money behind a campaign like this to stop the next generation of ballistic missile submarines right here at home Just think A new generation of U.S . Trident subs that will cost nearly 100 billion just to build sailing the seas until the year
I am beginning to understand how the US-DPRK “Leap Day Deal” came apart . You have to hand it to the North Koreans. They screwed the Obama Administration. But the Obama Administration didn’t do itself any favors, either. 1. To understand what happened, the most important observation relates to process. I had, somewhat carelessly, assumed [...] If you liked reading Frederick Forsyth’s Day of the Jackal, wait until you see the new monograph by Bruno Tertrais, A “Nuclear Coup”? France, the Algerian War and the April 1961 Nuclear Test. Actually, it would make a great movie. As much as I love The Battle of Algiers, Le Petit Soldat and Day of the Jackal – the [...]
I find it hard to believe that one could confuse a nuclear weapon with a latrine, but during the 1970s anything was possible. I am teaching a class at MIIS entitled “Security and Arms Control in Northeast Asia.” The course is structured around national security decisions so that students understand both the evolution of national [...]Readers beware: The next two posts are ridden with conflicts of interest. Policy entrepreneurship to reduce nuclear dangers would dry up without foundations. National leaders and bureaucracies are too consumed by their daily calendars to serve as their own think tanks. Instead, they borrow, embrace, implement or oppose initiatives that come from outside their ranks. [...]
: : skip to main skip to sidebar The Nuclear Abolitionist Working towards a nuclear weapons-free world Pages Home Video Photo Y-12 Witness Quotable America needs a new nuclear weapon as much as Lady Gaga needs another new . outfit Rep . Ed Markey D-MA Monday , March 5, 2012 Don't Bank on the Bomb : It's a bad investment , Friends The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons ICAN just launched a groundbreaking report on the global financing of the nuclear weapons industry . nbsp This is a watershed moment for the movement to abolish nuclear weapons . nbsp The comprehensive study , entitled Don’t Bank on the Bomb identifies more than 300 banks , pension funds , insurance companies and asset managers in 30 countries with substantial investments in nuclear arms producers . nbsp TheIn case you haven’t been watching, some very interesting fissures are now evident in the support for an independent British nuclear deterrent. This is going to be very interesting. There are two factors at play — the looming UK budget crisis and the possibility of an independent Scotland. Together, these two factors may achieve something [...]